The present invention relates generally to administration of addresses in a network, and more specifically to dynamic assignment of PHY addresses to multiple managed PHY entities that are managed by a station management entity.
FIG. 1 is a block schematic diagram of a conventional implementation of a station management (STA) entity 100 including medium access control (MAC) sublayer 105 and a reconciliation sublayer (RS) 110. STA 100 is coupled to a physical layer interface (PHY) 115 by a media independent interface (MII) 120. STA 100, PHY 115 and MII 120 operate according to parameters defined in IEEE 802.3u standard, hereby expressly incorporated by reference for all purposes. Clause 22 of the incorporated IEEE 802.3u standard describes MII 120 in an implementation that includes an interface that is a simple two wire, serial interface to connect STA 100 to PHY 115 for the purpose of controlling PHY 115 and gathering status information. MII 120 is an eighteen wire connection, with the two wires relevant for the control and gathering being a management data input/output (MDIO) line and a management data clock (MDC) (neither of which are individually shown in FIG. 1).
In some applications, it is desirable to attach one STA 100 to multiple PHY 115 devices. FIG. 2 is a block schematic diagram of a conventional multi-PHY 115.sub.i arrangement. Each PHY 115 device shown in FIG. 2 has an address to facilitate the control and data gathering functions. In a conventional system, the address of any particular PHY 115.sub.i device is set by appropriate grounding of any of five address pins ADDR.sub.0-4. STA 100 is coupled through a bus 205 to each PHY 115.sub.i device. STA 100 coupled to multiple PHY 115 devices must have a priori knowledge of the address of each PHY 115 if it is to control it and gather information from it. In these conventional systems requiring such a priori knowledge, flexibility, costs and efficiency in setting up and testing these systems are not optimal. It is desirable to find an effective solution to improving operation under these conditions so that effective administration of PHY addresses is possible with the attendant advantage of having efficient multi-phy systems.